On Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 2:20 PM, Jeffrey Malone <span dir="ltr">&lt;<a href="mailto:ieatlint@tehinterweb.com">ieatlint@tehinterweb.com</a>&gt;</span> wrote:<br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<p>Adding the most appropriate drama tag here.<br></p>
<p>I won&#39;t waste my time responding to the substance of your post. I will point out that you just called many of us nazis.<br>
Think about that.</p></blockquote><div>Um, yeah. It seems I invoked the meta-clause of Godwins law. Almost like I&#39;d done it on purpose. Fancy that. </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">

<p>Jeffrey</p>
<p></p><blockquote type="cite">On 1 Nov 2009 13:49, &quot;Crutcher Dunnavant&quot; &lt;<a href="mailto:crutcher@gmail.com" target="_blank">crutcher@gmail.com</a>&gt; wrote:<br><br>A number of people have been very rude and personally insulting in insisting that I should be &#39;nice&#39; and not make personal attacks. This is, however you look at it, hilarious. But I suppose I&#39;ll succumb to the cudgel of the populace, if only to demonstrate its effectiveness (again, ironic considering my stated goals in the original discussion, haha).<div>

<br></div><div>So this will be my last such &#39;corrective&#39; statement. You are, as always, free to ignore it, but I would suggest that you think on it. Surely, my zeal has a point of origin? Otherwise, why piss off people who&#39;s company I enjoy so much?</div>

<div><br></div><div>NB has reached a point of transition. We&#39;ve grown to a larger space, with a larger overhead budget. We have need of a good deal of money and people&#39;s time, just to continue to exist; much more so than we needed in the past.</div>

<div><br></div><div>But transitions shake out old patterns, and permit new connections; and ours has raised the hackles of a strange new conservatism. Perhaps proximity, in a space that can now accommodate more, so more frequent it. Perhaps &#39;officialness&#39;, now that we have a &#39;real&#39; space. I&#39;m not sure the causes, they likely differ for all involved. But it is in the air. I can&#39;t go a week without hearing a threat of prosecution for a breach of moral decorum lodged by one NBer to another. And I&#39;ve seen this pattern before, several times.</div>

<div><br></div><div>This is not my first self-governing nerdery. I&#39;ve been involved with many of them, my college dorm, scifi cons, a theatre honorary. I&#39;m not unique in this, even in this space. They tend to have wild swings of lifecycle, being full of individuals with personal agency (eg. Assholes), and being too small to support effective institutional memories. So, that&#39;s my background.</div>

<div><br></div><div>So, I&#39;m concerned. I see witch hunts in our future. I see &#39;excellence trials&#39;. &quot;Be Excellent to Each Other&quot; used to be used to explain why you&#39;d done something awesome, now its used to tell others to stop doing something you don&#39;t like. A virtue transformed into a cudgel. People threaten to call the police on each other, frequently. People threaten to kick each other out of NB with the use of the consensus process, frequently. We&#39;ve not actually done it yet, but the tension seems to be growing, not abating.</div>

<div><br></div><div>To quote a great musical: &quot;Nice is different from Good&quot;.</div><div><br></div><div>I feel that there must be balance in the force. There must be a degree of wooly contempt towards the opinions and arguments of others. We are hackers, let there be proof, let there be working code, let there be cited case study, or exploding underwear, or something, anything other than &quot;I&#39;m disappointed&quot;.</div>

<div><br></div><div>I am saying, openly, here for the last time; a duel at dawn on the rooftop is better than an expulsion by consensus. A war of pranks and one-up-manship and sheer awesome (such as the DJ-booth, A+ all around) is the whole Point.</div>

<div><br></div><div>When you find yourself wanting to say &quot;Don&#39;t do that&quot;, please, show some restraint. Be &#39;nice&#39;.</div><div><br></div><div>First they came for the E. Coli, and I did not speak out - because I was not E. Coli,</div>

<div>Then they came for the Smokers, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Smoker,</div><div>Then they came for the Drunks, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Drunk,</div><div>Then they came for the Stoners, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Stoner,</div>

<div>Then they came for the Cooks, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Cook,</div><div>Then they came for the Homeless Hackers, and I did not speak out - because I was not a Homeless Hacker,</div><div>Then they came for the Assholes - and there was no one left to speak for me.</div>